Left to Right: Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose, Carrie MacLemore as Heather, Greta Gerwig as Violet and Analeigh Tipton as Lily in, "Damsels in Distress."

Photo: Sabrina Lantos, Sony Pictures Classics

Left to Right: Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose, Carrie MacLemore as...

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Left to Right: Carrie MacLemore as Heather, Greta Gerwig as Violet and Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose in "Damsels in Distress," about three women who set out to change the male domination on a college campus and rescue fellow students from depression, grunge and low standards.
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Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman's first film in 14 years reminds us that sometimes people don't get better; they just get more so - as in, more like themselves, for better or worse. In the case of "Damsels in Distress," there is no better, just worse, and that's a big disappointment.

What makes this a disappointment, and not just another who-cares bad movie, is that there is something intrinsically appealing in a Whit Stillman universe, which here, as elsewhere, is populated by hyper-verbal, hyper-rational young people who talk in long, complete sentences and try to analyze away their helplessness and longing. But in "Damsels in Distress," dealing with a group of college women who try to mask their personal terrors through altruistic acts, these elements are wedded to flat scenes, weak characters and a disjointed and almost nonexistent narrative.

See this, and you will find that there is something about this film that refuses to be watched. It's very strange. You can almost say it simulates an experience of brain injury in the audience: Nothing adheres, nothing connects. It's just nonstop cuteness, poses and emptiness - with nothing logically following from one moment to the next. It would be exaggerating to call it torture, and yet why split hairs?

This is a film by a director giving in to the impulse to mock himself, a director who might have been the American Eric Rohmer, but instead has become an uptown Hal Hartley, minus the conviction. Certainly, Stillman has a better movie in him than this wretched mess, something from the heart, without the smirking. That's the Whit Stillman movie I want to see.